An invitation for Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro to attend the Summit of the Americas has been withdrawn after the Latin American country's decision to hold early presidential elections – a move seen as all but shutting out the opposition.

In a terse statement on Tuesday, Peru's Foreign Minister Cayetana Aljovin said Maduro's "presence will no longer be welcome" at the Summit of the Americas, a regional policy gathering scheduled this year to be held in Lima in April.

South African President Jacob Zuma has announced he is resigning after nearly nine years in power. His decision, stated during a nationally broadcast address Wednesday, hands power to his deputy and the leader of the country's ruling African National Congress, Cyril Ramaphosa.

"No life should be lost in my name. And also the ANC should never be divided in my name," Zuma said during his speech. "I have therefore come to the decision to resign as president of the republic with immediate effect."

A punishing series of U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in Syria last week reportedly killed an unknown number of Russian mercenaries fighting on behalf of the Damascus regime, with some sources saying there were "dozens" of casualties.

The Pentagon says a counterattack aimed at defending U.S. forces in the oil-rich Deir el-Zour province a week ago went on for more than three hours and involved B-52 strategic bombers, AC-130 gunships, F-15E attack planes, Apache attack helicopters and Reaper drones.

At a meeting with business leaders in Rockport, Texas, Tuesday — one of the areas slammed hardest by the storm — the governor announced the state expects to receive more than $1 billion in hazard-mitigation funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency by next summer. Five hundred million of that is available immediately.

A federal judge in New York has ruled that the Trump administration cannot end the Obama-era program designed to protect from deportation young immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.

The man who set off a pressure cooker bomb in Manhattan has been sentenced to life in prison.

Ahmad Khan Rahimi was convicted of detonating the homemade bomb in the Chelsea neighborhood in September 2016, injuring 30 people. He also planted a second bomb that failed to explode.

After a two-week trial in October, a jury found Rahimi guilty on eight counts, including the use of a weapon of mass destruction. Federal Judge Richard Berman, who presided over the trial, imposed the sentence Tuesday in New York.

The head of a major Hispanic business association is stepping aside after allegations of improperly increasing his salary and sexual misconduct.

The United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce said president and CEO Javier Palomarez and its board of directors "have mutually agreed to undergo a leadership transition for the organization effective immediately," the organization said in a statement to NPR.

Isreali police are urging the attorney general to indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in two corruption cases involving bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

The recommendation is the result of more than a year of investigations into allegations that Netanyahu improperly accepted expensive gifts including pink champagne and cigars from Israeli Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan and Australian billionaire James Packer in exchange for favors.

It feels like just yesterday that Chicagoans were told that their prized skyscraper, once the world's tallest building, would no longer be named the Sears Tower.

"Call it the Big Willy," encouraged the CEO of the company that had bought the naming rights. But it's been almost nine years, and while some folks do call it the Willis Tower, few do it with much gusto. And no one calls it Big Willy.

Now Chicagoans are losing the name of another beloved skyscraper: the John Hancock Center.

A senior Oxfam official stepped down Monday after news reports revealed that the humanitarian group had covered up evidence that some of its aid staff hired prostitutes in Chad and Haiti as the organization was delivering disaster assistance to those countries.

The African National Congress, South Africa's ruling party, has voted to "recall" President Jacob Zuma. The ANC has tried for weeks to get Zuma, whose term expires next year, to resign following allegations of corruption.

Drugmakers gave millions of dollars to pain-treatment advocacy groups over a five-year period beginning in 2012, in effect promoting opioids to individuals most vulnerable to addiction, according to a new report released Monday by a U.S. senator.

It's a year later than first promised, but President Trump finally announced his long-awaited infrastructure plan at the White House today, flanked by governors, mayors, and other state and local leaders. Calling the condition of the country's roads, bridges, ports, tunnels and water systems "horrendous," Trump says his plan "will spur the biggest and boldest infrastructure investment in American history. The framework will generate an unprecedented $1.5- to $1.7-trillion investment in American infrastructure."

To clarify, it's not that California has a huge problem with run-of-the-mill rats, it's that the state has an emerging problem with jumbo-sized critters.

Nutria, otherwise called Myocastor coypus, were thought to have been eradicated from the state's wetlands and rivers as far back as 1965, but they have mysteriously reappeared in three counties over the past year, California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesman Peter Tira told NPR.

Two Baltimore plainclothes police detectives were convicted Monday of racketeering, robbery and fraud in a trial involving a wide range of criminal activities by an elite police unit charged with reducing the number of illegal guns on that city's streets.

Detectives Daniel Hersl, 48, and Marcus Taylor, 31, were members of the Gun Trace Task Force. They were convicted with the help of testimony by four former members of the unit.

Political turmoil in the communities of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, have resulted in the resignations of nearly a dozen city and utility board employees.

The communities are the longtime home of a polygamous sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which has been the target of state and federal investigations and lawsuits. FLDS leader Warren Jeffs is serving a life sentence for sexual assault of children.

Ukrainian authorities have deported Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Georgian president who has emerged as a vocal antagonist of the government in Kiev. Ukraine's border agency confirmed his deportation to Poland on Monday, while videos on social media purported to show Saakashvili getting seized by masked men.

South African police say a suspected poacher was eaten by a pride of lions at a big game park in the province of Limpopo.

The animals "ate his body, nearly all of it, and just left his head and some remains," Limpopo police spokesman Moatshe Ngoepe told AFP. "It seems the victim was poaching in the game park when he was attacked and killed by lions."

A loaded hunting rifle, found near the man's remains, appears to be the main reason police think the individual was a poacher.

Dozens of writers and illustrators earned some of the highest honors in children's literature at a joyous gathering hosted by the American Library Association in Denver on Monday. But just two managed to snag the best-known, most prestigious annual prizes for books aimed at young readers.

Erin Entrada Kelly's Hello, Universe won the Newbery Medal for outstanding contribution to children's literature, and Matthew Cordell's Wolf in the Snow won the Caldecott Medal for most distinguished American picture book for children.